Electronic health records (EHRs) and healthcare IT spending have received quite a bit of press recently. In one week we have seen:
- The House Ways and Means Committee called for $20 billion in spending to encourage the adoption of health information technology, including payments of up to $65,000 to physicians who demonstrate that they are effectively using electronic data (in quality reporting, for example);
- Experts warned that rushing the process of digitizing patient records could potentially lead to wasteful spending, citing interconnectivity issues and bringing physicians and clinicians up to speed on new processes;
- The Kaiser Family Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health released a report revealing that Americans had little support for increased federal spending on healthcare IT (60 percent of respondents felt that health IT spending should remain at the same level as before, while only 20 percent felt health IT spending should go up. Meanwhile, 17 percent suggested that spending should drop.);
- The U.S. Senate’s stimulus package includes an additional $3 billion more for health IT than that proposed by the U.S. House;
- The Health and Human Services Department has formally recognized three new interoperability specifications related to EHRs, personal health records and electronic quality monitoring. This recognition is part of a two-step process in which specifications are first accepted by the HHS secretary and then recognized a year later.
Obviously, healthcare information technology has a front-and-center role in the new Obama administration. The outcome of what’s to come has yet to be seen, of course, and as opinions vary widely, the actions that follow in the immediate future will have great ramifications to every aspect of the healthcare industry.
Yes, technology can be used to increase quality and improve outcomes – provided that all sides of the HIT coin are examined and addressed. As Bill Crounse, M.D., senior director of Worldwide Health for Microsoft Corporation simply states in HealthBlog, “IT is just a tool; nothing less, nothing more. It is not by itself a solution.”
This blog originally appeared on Action for Better Healthcare. -Ed